Article Title
CTS Corp v. Waldburger
Abstract
The Supreme Court determined that a North Carolina statute of repose barred plaintiffs from bringing suit against CTS Corporation for contamination that occurred on land CTS owned 24 years earlier. The Court found that CERCLA preempts state statutes of limitations in order to allow plaintiffs’ claims to accrue when the injury is caused by contamination that has a long latency period. However, the Court also decided that CERLCA does not preempt state statutes of repose because Congress did not specifically preempt them as they did with statutes of limitations, thus; enforcing statutes of repose was not found to frustrate the purpose of CERCLA. Although plaintiffs did not discover the contamination until 22 years after it occurred, they nonetheless failed to bring their claim within the 10 years required by the North Carolina statute and were barred from bringing suit.